I want to learn how to speak Spanish. Help me please!!!

[yautiawoman2]

[quote]Originally posted by Hombre-cuidad
[b]I am not really sure how to help. I think you can try to take soem tutoring again, practice harder, get language tapes. If you want to translate something online, just copy the text you want to translate and paste it at http://www.freetranslation.com


Insistencias


Dear Sir: I have taken the time to send you this "misiva" since you do not recognize the importance of the " components" of culture and insist on a mechanistic world a la "Dios es Maquina."
It seems to me a bit much, your reductionist view of the world. Let me begin with a quote from an essay of one of our compatriotas on the issue of Cross Cultural Communication and your obvious position of "English Only."

Insistencias by Luz Nereida Perez:


Resulta sorprendente el que personas con una clara ideología independentista nos inclinemos tan automática y colonizadamente al uso de expresiones que conceptualmente contradicen nuestras propias ideas de desvinculación del poder opresor con el cual llevamos más de dos siglos luchando. Resulta asombroso, por ejemplo, el que inconscientemente insistamos -mediante un empleo irreflexivo y descuidado del idioma- en reconocer a Estados Unidos como un poder superior -y nosotros consecuentemente como inferiores- al engranarnos mediante nuestras impensadas expresiones a su repulsiva teoría del Destino Manifiesto.

Point #1: There are many intelligent, political, articulate, well meaning persons who think "English Only" should be the universal language of humanity. This, my dear sir, is viewed by many of your compatriotas, and mine, as part of the "repulsive theory of Manifest Destiny." This, sir, in my humble opinion, is linguistic "reduccionismo" and I will have to let MIT's Department of Linguistics straighten you out on this one, since they are the experts in the field of saving languages and cultures that are at the verge of extinction. (See Wayne O'Neill, Chairman Dept of Linguistics, MIT).

De igual modo -y como si todavía hiciera falta más- surge ese escape subliminal de reconocimiento de una grandeza superior en la nación imperialista y opresora al contraponernos como algo chiquito y, por ende, obviamente inferior. Razón tenía el caborrojeño Ramón Emeterio Betances cuando enunció que nos creemos que los grandes así lo son por el sencillo hecho de que desde nuestra perspectiva de arrodillados -o como diría nuestro jíbaro desde el punto de vista de los ñangotados- todos los demás definitivamente resultan ser de inmensa estatura.

Point#2 We cannot go into detail on this point so let me just try to be brief and cut to the chase:

On the Issue of Wold View, or Philosophy a la Gringolandia:

Recently there has been a great deal of "hullabaloo" about genetic reductionism and race theory. Now, to keep it simple, the conclusion, according to the latest research, is that we all came from one black woman in Africa (and I am not talking about Lucy). That makes everybody in this world "a ******" now I don't have any problems with that, (a mi me llaman la negra y soy la Negra de casa) since birth I have identified with the idea that I am a Caribbean person, and thus black. Now, if we had to pick a non-Puerto Rican to quote on the question of the psychological persona of the Caribbean Archipelago I would pick Fanon, given the fact that he is black and that you identify with the US racist paradigm (the World is Black and White, all things must be reduced to genetic, racist paradigms, for starters).

Now, I know you were not educated at the University of Puerto Rico, but I was. Way, back when, In those days we studied the black psyche in a white world, and hailed as our hero Franz Fanon, for his scientific analysis and poetic grace (born in Martinique in 1925 and studied medicine in France, specializing in psychiatry). We read the "Wretched of the Earth," we argued about "A Dying Colonialism" and got angry over the Chacales who assassinated our heroes in the African Revolutions, since Fanon considered those revolutions to be the 20th Century's most important struggles for liberation and since el Che was right in the thick of things at the UN. And if you really do not want to deal with Hostos and Betances and our traditional heroes then let me introduce you to Aime Cesaire, who said (Discours sur le Colonialisme) "I am talking of millions of men who have been skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement." I think it is good for you to know what many Puerto Ricans who live and struggle for independence have not said to you. And I want you to know that the reason they have not said it is not because they don't care what your reductionistic world is all about, after all we enjoy keeping up with every scientific myth the gringos cook up, it is because they are too busy with the real issue of consensus on our Archipelago today, Vieques, la isla nena. Vieques is a small island of mostly black men who are fishermen. Many black men from the other islands, who also fish often come to help our brothers in Vieques. So let me be quite frank, Fanon was right, I will paraphrase for your edification.

"I think it would be good if certain things were said. These things I am going to say, not shout. For it is a long time since shouting has gone out of my life. So very long...." (el hombre se sentia cansado, y yo tambien).

Why waste my time in the internet? No one has asked me for it, except for maybe one person. Some have communicated that they wish for me to respond to your reductionistic emotions, so it is especially those to whom it is directed.

"Well? Well, I reply quite calmly that there are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.

Toward a new humanism. ...

Understanding among men. ..."

Our colored brothers and sisters. ...

Humanity, I believe in you. ...

Race prejudice, the reduction to a black gene. ....

To understand and to love and to trust....

From all sides hundreds of Web Pages assail my senses, they try to impose their will on me. But a single line would be enough. Supply one lonely black gene to account for the human race and the color problem would be stripped of all its importance.

So the question remains: What does this man want? What does the black man want?

Again, let me quote Fanon: "At the risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers, I will say that the back is not a man." (si te cae la lluvia, busca una sombrilla y esto pal compa que puso un anuncio en el periodico para formar un ejercito en la defensa de la patria nuestra y solo le aparecieron dos mujeres).

"There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinary sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born. (parece que Fanon esta escribiendo despues del 9-11) In most cases, the black man lacks the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent into a real hell.

Man is not merely a possibility of recapture or of negation. If it is true that consciousness is a process of transcendence, we have to see too that this transcendence is haunted by the problems of love and understanding. Man is a yes that vibrates to cosmic harmonies. (por eso nos entretiene y nos facina tanto el tema de los planetas, las estrellas, el firmamento, las galaxias y el mito de la creacion del universo, sea desde el punto de vista "mitologico, pero mitos nuestros, como el del pajaro carpintero y las leyendas en la poesia de Corretjer" o "cientifico" ("big bang" vs. little whimper de la mitologia cientifica de los gringos). Uprooted, pursued, baffled, doomed to watch the dissolution of the truths that he has worked out for himself one after another, he has to give up projecting unto the world an antinomy that coexists with him.

The black is a black man; that is, as the result of a series of aberrations of affect (as in emotions), he is rooted at the core of a universe from which he must be extricated.

The problem is important. I propose nothing short of the liberation of the man of color from himself. We shall go very slowly, for there are two camps: the white and the black. (Pa los gringos solo existen Blancos o Negros, y perdonen por este aparte, es parte de mi humor "negro" o si no me lo creen preguntelen a Clinton, "nuestro" primer Presidente "Negro" de Harlem).

Stubbornly we shall investigate both metaphysics (Black and White) and we shall find that they are often quite fluid.

We shall have no mercy for the former governors, the former missionaries. To us, the man who adores the Negro is as "sick" as the man who abominates him.

Conversely, the black man who wants to turn his race white is as miserable as he who preaches hatred for the whites.

In the absolute, the black is no more to be loved than the Czech (o el "Afghanistan"), and truly what is to be done is to set man (sic)) free. (Pobres diablos).

Yo lo actualiso, porque llevamos mucho tiempo en esta discusion. Fanon puede decir lo que quiera pero que no lo diga Oscar Lewis (en Mexico o en Puerto Rico) las razones porque somos tan "Condenados de la Tierra" o tan colonizados. esa pregunta se la dejo a Eduardo Seda Bonilla, pa que la conteste; o a Zenon, no al pescador de Vieques, (ese no tiene tiempo pa este relajo, aunque tiene la capacidad intelectual, y es uno de mis contemporaneos y un verdadero compatriota), pero al Profesor de la UPR y autor de" Narciso Descubre Su Tracero", que fue profesor mio.

"...But these truths were a fire in me then. Now I can tell them without being burned. These truths do not have to be hurled in men's faces. They are not intended to ignite fervor. I do not trust fervor.

Every time it has burst out somewhere, it has brought fire, famine, misery....And contempt for man.

Fervor is a weapon of choice of the impotent.

Of those who heat the iron in order to shape it at once. I should prefer to warm man's body and leave him. We might reach this result: mankind retaining this fire through self-combustion.

Mankind (sic) set free of the trampoline that is the resistance of others, and digging into its own flesh to find a meaning. "

Only a few of you reading this will understand the problems that were encountered in its composition. After all I am a product of my past, all of it, genetic, culture, psyche, sex, race, religion, language and national origin, disability and alas old age. I do not want to form categories, but if I must in order to satisfy those who cannot connect without the gringo obsession of pigeon holes, so be it!

Dice Fanon, y yo cito:

"In an age when skeptical doubt has taken root in the world, when in the words of a gang of salauds it is no longer possible to find a sense of non-sense, it becomes harder to penetrate to a level where the categories of sense and non-sense are not yet invoked." (Thus my remark, esto del reductionism genetic es pura basura, chico).

The black man wants to be white. The white man slaves to reach a human level.

In the course of this essay we shall observe the development of an effort to understand the black-white relation. (Remember we are talking about the gringo paradigm where everything is black or white).

The white man is sealed in his whiteness.

The black man in his blackness.

We shall seek to ascertain the directions of this dual narcissism and the motivation that inspire it.

...Concern with the elimination of a vicious circle has been the only guide-line for my efforts.

There is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to black men.

There is another fact: Black men want to prove to white men, at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect.

..................................

"Man's tragedy, Nietzche said, is that he was once a child. None the less, we cannot afford to forget that, as Charles Odier has shown us, the neurotic's fate remains in his own hands." (No es culpa mia que naci y me crie en un barrio entre los montes de Naranjito, Corozal, Comerio y Barranquitas. No es mi culpa que prefiera los cuentos de mis tias y mis tios de esos barrios, y que identifique con la poesia de Corretjer cuando sube tristemente por el Barrio la Cuchilla. o con el Cuento de Abelardo D.A. de Santa Clo en una escuelita de la Cuchilla y que prefiera estos a los cuentos de Mark Twain de Huckleberry Finn o Tom Sawyer, o a la poesia de Shakespeare o Elizabeth Barret Browning, aunque tuve que aprendermelos de memoria, los lei pero la verdad nunca le encontre el chiste. Como que no tienen el mismo sabor de los cuentistas y los poetas nuestros. (Que culpa tiene la estaca....).

Every paradigm in the public schools of the US begins with a psychological truth or reality of the gringo culture, it is individualistic and very Skinnerian. Individualism in the service of the mighty dollar. Or consumer driven, narcissistic, alienated, individuals dedicated to a pure, unadulterated basic genetic drive: greed. (The Great experiment, Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics, at the time of Allende I only understood that I loved the songs of Victor Jara, "Te Recuerdo Amanda...la calle mojada...or the voice of Violeta Parra "Gracias a la Vida"... que me ha dado tanto, or the poems of a Chilean who first I encountered in a protest song by a Puerto Rican "Si Nueva York relumbra como el oro y hay edificios con quinientos barres, aqui dejare escrito que se hicieron con el sudor de todos los arrabales) Pablo Neruda. .

So I agree with Fanon, the gringo analysis must be psychological, and it is based on a sense of "individual freedom" that culture requires it.

We are told we are fighting for individual freedom, for democracy for the "Bill of Rights" of the US constitution, which our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters have taken serious, after all, we probably lost more people on 9-11, per capita, than any other ethnic group. Now soldiers, (Navy, Air force, Marines or National Guard) are protecting the "rest of us" from international terror by assassinating thousands of people in Afghanistan.. So when Fanon says:

In spite of this it is apparent to me that the effective dis-alienation of the black man entails an immediate recognition of social and economic realities. If there is an inferiority complex, it is the outcome of a double process:

--primarily, economic;

--subsequently, the internalization-or, better, the epidermalization-of this inferiority."

At the bottom of the gringo paradigm of Freud and Skinner is the child in me, the adult in me and the father in me theory, the great trinity in me.

"Reacting against the constitutionalist tendency of the late ninteenth century, Freud inisited that the individual factor be taken into account through psych9oanlaysis. He substituted for a phylogenetic theory the ontogenetic perspective. It will be ssen that thje black man's alienation is not an individual question. Beside phylogeny and onto9geny stands sociogeny. In one sense, confroming to the view of Leconte and Damey, let us say that this is a question of a sociodiagnostic (un diagnostico social)..

But society, unlike biochemical processes, cannot escape human influences. Man is what brings society into being. The prognosis is in the hands of those who are willing to get rid of the worm-eaten roots of the structure (O como hemos dicho, la realidad se construye socialmente).

The black man must wage his war on both levels:Since historically they influence each other, any unilateral liberation is incomplete, and the gravest mistake would be to believe in their automatic interdependence. Besides, such a systematic tendency is contrary to the facts. This will be proved.

Reality, for once, requires a total understanding. On the objective level as on the subjective level, a solution has to be supplied."

Did we begin with a language argument?: Let us return to the essay posted by nuestra colega on Insistencia:




Y de rodillas nos ponemos en nuestro impensado empleo de las voces "metrópolis", "norteamericano" o "americano" y en el uso del concepto "isla". Reflexionemos, pues... ¿Qué hace un independentista llamando metrópolis a Estados Unidos, sino es reconociendo a ese país como nuestra ciudad central? ¿No es eso acaso absolutamente contrario a la base conceptual de nuestra ideología? ¿No es precisamente lo que combatimos mediante esta lucha a la que hemos consagrado nuestras vidas? Consideremos las codificaciones léxicas y las etimologías de los vocablos que día a día empleamos. Reflexionemos sobre sus valores y su poder ante los otros. ¿Qué es lo que realmente estamos comunicando?

La voz metrópoli o metrópolis -puede escribirse indistintamente de una u otra manera- procede del griego méter (madre) y polis(ciudad). Es decir, que la metrópolis es la ciudad madre, la ciudad central, la ciudad superior ante la cual otras son inferiores e inclinan sus cabezas. El Diccionario Clave de Uso del Español Actual nos ofrece tres definiciones para este sustantivo hispánico, la primera de las cuales es: "ciudad principal o muy importante por su extensión o por su inmensa población". De donde indiscutiblemente se deriva que San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico es la metrópolis de nuestro país. La segunda definición -que es la que es anatema en su uso para los que proclamamos el ideal de la independencia es: "país al que pertenece una colonia". Seguidamente el mencionado Diccionario la emplea en la siguiente oración: Las colonias querían independizarse de la metrópoli. ¡Y ahí es que está la clave! A quienes proclamamos el ideal de la independencia no nos debe dar la gana de reconocer a Estados Unidos -ni a la mismísima España cuando aludimos a ella en escritos históricos- como metropólis porque la palabra otorga, la palabra decreta, la palabra es el arma más poderosa del mundo y al aludir al poder opresor como metrópoli bajamos las cabezas y le reconocemos una supremacía. [A la autora de esta columna no le da la real gana de reconocer ideológica o lingüísticamente a Estados Unidos como metrópoli. Nos parece absolutamente inconcebible aludir a ese país como tal en nuestra expresión hablada o escrita. ¡Estados Unidos definitiva y contundemente NO es mi metrópolis!] La tercera definición del mentado vocablo es de orden eclesiástico cuando se emplea para aludir a la "iglesia arzobispal de la que dependen algunas diócesis". Allá ellos con su uso, pero en lo que a otros respecta el vocablo metrópolis es definitivamente anatema (voz que en la Iglesia Católica es sinónimo de excomunión). Así que a excomulgar, apartar o excluir de nuestra comunicación -que no es otra cosa que común unión o comunión- al vocablo metrópolis. ¡Excomulgado ha de quedar!


Por otro lado, propóngamonos igualmente a erradicar de nuestra expresión diaria el uso de los gentilicios "americano" o "norteamericano" para aludir a quienes nuestra lengua otorga un gentilicio claro, definido y con sus lindes: estadounidense. Si su lengua inglesa no se ocupó de otorgarles un gentilicio claro y distintivo -porque nadie es "United Statean"-, pues allá ellos. Si ellos optaron por apropiarse engreída y prepotentemente de América, denominándose "American" o "Northamericans", pues allá ellos. Pero en lo que a nosotros respecta, no les entreguemos a Norteamérica -que incluye a México- y mucho menos a la América nuestra. ¡Que se recojan a buen vivir dentro de los lindes de su territorio! ¡Son estadounidenses -con fronteras claras y limitadas- y punto!


Finalmente abandonemos la costumbre de aludir a nuestro país como "isla". ¡Demontre, no somos una isla, sino un archipiélago! ¿Acaso vamos a pie a Vieques y a Culebra? ¿Acaso se puede llegar al Viejo San Juan sin cruzar puentes? ¿Cuándo vamos a dejar de repetir lo que dijo el gringo aberrado Miller en su abominable historia de Puerto Rico en cuanto a que somos una "isla chiquita y de escasos recursos". Sustituyamos la expresión isla por país o sencillamente por el bello nombre del nuestro: Puerto Rico.
Now the trick is to continue in the construction of a dialogue for a new paradigm when there is so much diversity of world views in Puerto Rico.com



Lets then begin with application of your world view to the theme of education. Since you have been molded in a Gringo Mentality let us place this "box" in a compartmentalized cultural rubric we shall label: Situational Culture

Let's say you have taken over the education system in Puerto Rico and you are about to implement your Gringo Paradigm. You must begin by the destruction of the present educational system there, no big deal, there are many compatriotas that are quite unhappy with el "Departamento de Destruction Publica"

First step: Question

What are the important theoretical and programmatic dimensions of bilingual programs (transitional bilingual, since you will be phasing out Puerto Rican Spanish, History and Culture and substituting a completely Gringo Paradigm but under complete autonomy and under the control of the Puerto Rican Party).

What are the theoretical dimensions of the communities (Neoricans in Puerto Rico and in the US) in which the programs of bilingual education of excellence exist?

For the purpose of simplicity and brevity here let me put the question as follows:

First: What are the key independent variables (casual factors) which influence bilingual education programs in the US?

Second: What are the key dependent variables (outcomes) of bilingual education and in re. to the Puerto Rican population in the US?

Third: What are some of the major intervening variables (factors) or the factors modifying (as in Skinner) such outcomes?

Of course, there is no one correct or Single Factor (see Marcus) to these questions, but we shall deal with some important theoretical dimensions, after all the strand is called philosophy.

First: The independent variables, and the interpretation of outcomes depends on the world view of the researcher and the particular theory he or she employs to explain and predict the phenomena.

(Assume a Null Hypothesis)

We will attempt to develop three strands, you can pick and chose your preferred educational paradigm by choosing one of the particular theories of social and educational change and to delineate the identification and interpretation of variables of bilingual education within the framework of each particular theory.

We can probably agree on some basic phenomena which form the background to OBEMLA ( An office within the Department of Education of the US of which I was a fellow; Doctoral Fellow, OBEMLA, 1978), (Ed.D.F. University of San Francisco 1980). My basic concern was adult literacy and and the first chapter of my thesis. This research was based on Policy Studies at San Diego State University, on how the US manipulates International Education models for the purpose of "Nation Building" (as in Pinochet's Chile, por eso de el modelo neoliberal de Milton Freidman y la Chicago School of Economics); which gave rise lead me to include the original purpose of the Congressional debates re. the legislation of Title VII of (Elementary and Secondary Education Act at the time HEW or Department of Health, Education and Welfare). Title VII was to target mostly Mexican and Mexican American Children from a low socioeconomic stuatus (SES) measured by Federal Free Lunch or Reduced Lunch in the US Public Schools. and who spoke no or poor (PE) English and who encountered massive school dropout. The "Hispanic" children suffered from suspensions and expulsions and even if they remained in school they experienced failure, with the result of consequent early antisocial activities in and out of school to this day (gangs or "palomillas" of the US barrios). At the end of the line the outcome was low integration into the economic life of the nation. They become part of the informal economy, (see New School of Social Research, Havermas).

Now let us say we are helping you cope with this very serious problem when you have control of the Puerto Rican Education System (El Departamento de Destruccion Publica a la Partido PR)

The controversy will begin when we consider why this is so, any redblooded Gringo will tell you it is because you are Puerto Rican and because of your genetics, you are inferior! Punto, end of story!

(See Jensen, et. al)

But hold your horses, you are talking to the essence of that identity, a Jibara del campo (de por alla cerca del Abanico), who probably would be a "border line" (LD) person under such a definition. Now LD or Learning Disabled persons are really a social construction of reality, in my humble Jibara point of view.

Take for example, your President George WWW Bush. now you know and I know them there mistakes the Prez makes are a result of the fact the poor devil is dyslexic (not the same as Freud's Psychopathology of everyday life) besides he is from Texas! Thus your Prez is a Learning Disabled person and we have no problems with that, after all he is not the first US President who is LD, other living "repucke" US Presidents also qualify under Special Education Definitions as defined under ADA and/or IDEA (Individuals with disabilities in Education Act). i.e. Ford and Reagan.

What outcomes should follow the proposed Puerto Rican model will differ when I chose a different philosophical strand to explain reality, not based on genetics, but on the social construction of reality.

Such scholarly disagreement at given times becomes public, as in this public forum.

(See the American Anthropological Association's censure of the work of Arthur Jensen).

Now back when I was a student at the University of Puerto Rico (y desde entonces ha llovido mucho), other fields of study looked at scholarly strife within their disciplines from the notion of Kuhn's paradigm shift (1970, pobre Prof. Buitrago, como sufrio conmigo). Entonces yo ni sabia como se comia eso de paradigm shifts. Much less the dimensions or implications for bilingual education. Later in my life I published a small volume for the Institute of Cultural Pluralism in an attempt to design a conceptual framework for the purpose of posing Problems and Issues in Bilingual Education Programming.

But let us return to Kuhn, by paradigms, Kuhn means "the way a scientific or a professional community views a field of study, adentifies the appropriate problems for study, and specifies legitimate concepts and methods." Kuhn:

Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards...and continuation of a particular research tradition...paradigm is a criterion for choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for granted, can be assumed to have solutions. To a great extent, these are the only problems that the community will admit as scientific or encourage its members to undertake. A paradigm can even isolate the community from those socially important problems that are not reducible to puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies (See RG Paulston, 1976).

In other words, and for your edification, we are introducing you to the controversy that many Puerto Ricans encounter with the "English Only vs. Bilingual Education or English Plus" mobs in the US.

In brief, R.G. Paulston, (drawing on the literature for my first chapter, a literature of social and educational change for educating the masses, proposes two models). They are based on two major US Educational paradigms: the functional or "equilibirum" paradigm (the US Educational Models are just fine, don't fix it if it ain't broke for those that want to maintain the status quo), or the "conflict paradigm" (and admittedly these two cross and overlap in the US). You will be happy to know that the theories that fall within the "equlibrium" paradigm are evolutionary (a la Darwin), structural-functionalist, and systems oriented with a very statistical analysis (for the purpose of selecting stratified random samples within the broad spectrum of the planned variation longitudinal studies available in the field of bilingual education research). But basically these theories are focused on maintaining society in equilibrium through the "harmonious relationship" of the social components, and emphasis on smooth cumulative change towards a more perfect Gringo model of education for the purpose of a more perfect consumer society, in other words you transfor through slow reform (very slow, see Brown vs. The Board, when the court ordered integration was supposed to be "with deliberate speed" it was so deliberate we are back to Plessy's separate but unequal).

Theoretical approaches which fall within the conflict paradigm are group conflict theory, cultural revitalization theory, and an anarchistic-utopian approach, for example: saving Native American Indian Languages and Cultures, ie, Hopi, Navajo, Apache, Lakota, or even better (in the Anglo sense of the world) the "Civilized Nations of the Native American State, Oklahoma, i.e. Cherokee Nation type of Bilingual Educational Model (now we are in the domain of the Department of the Interior and the BIA).

"Theories which cluster more or less within the conflict paradigm emphasize the inherent instability of social systems and the conflicts over values, resources, and power that follow as a natural consequence" R. G. Paulston, 1976 (PR a good example).

Thus each theory will identify differently the key variables and their relationships, and each researcher will seek to answer

[yautiawoman2]

Reality, (Wow!) What a Concept
By Rubén Berríos Martínez


Without attributing responsibility for my ideas to anyone but myself, I must confess, at the start, that my education at Yale Law School under the guidance of Prof. Myrs McDougal, left me with an unbending propensity to look beyond the letter of the law and probe into its economic, political, and even psychological context. In analyzing a juridical problem - like the Puerto Rican case before us nothing better exemplifies my attitude that an anecdote recalled by a very good friend who studied law, not far from here, in Boston, is a Law School, not famous - at least during my student years - for anything resembling what we at Yale called, in Prof. McDougals term, a "policy oriented approach" (Reality -Wow- What a Concept!).

It is from the perspective of reality and the juridical concepts flowing from that reality - that I will analyze US - Puerto Rico relations.

One can describe this whole past century - since Puerto Rico became a possession of the US by virtue of the Spanish American War - as a prolonged and vain attempt by the American juridical system to justify and legitimize a new political reality (US control of a foreign or alien people) that is diametrically apposed to the very nature of the US constitutional system. In short a constitutional order, born of the first modern anti-colonial struggle was forced to juridically justify colonialism, a notion not only contrary but repugnant to its very nature.

There are two basic undeniable facts that have determined Puerto Rico's relation with the US since 1898. First; US geopolitical and military considerations have been the basic determinants of US policy towards Puerto Rico since the late 19th century. Second; Puerto Rico is a distinct and homogeneous spanish speaking Latin American nation.

In the tension arising from the US will to control Puerto Rico and the struggle of the Puerto Rican people to control their own destiny, can be written the reality of 20th Century US Puerto Rico relations. The legal doctrines referring to such relations supplement that reality.

I.The geo-political and military considerations which led to the US involvement is the Cuban-Spanish War are well known. As regards Puerto Rico its control by the US was basic to the extension of US influence over LA in general and the Caribbean in particular. The acquisition of Puerto Rico was further tied to the decision to build the Panama Canal.

The first legal doctrine developed to justify or legitimize US control of the alien territories and peoples acquired by virtue of the War of 1898 was the doctrine of non-incorporation. The Philippines and Puerto Rico presented new realities which the US had never faced. This doctrine as you well know, had its genesis in various law review articles and was crystallized at the beginning of this century in several Supreme Court decision. For purpose of my exposition, suffice it to say that it is a doctrine designed to justify the presence and control of the US in the Philippines and Puerto Rico territories which are not destined towards statehood. In the new legal vocabulary developed by the Supreme Court those territories belong to but are not part of the US.

For the first time, the US acquired "possessions" as distinct from territories on the way to ultimate statehood, and had been this case since the Louisiana Purchase. It is thus not strange that different words were found to distinguish between old fashioned territories which were part of the "corpus" of the US political body (that is the incorporated territories) and the new type of territories or possessions (not part of the US "corpus") which were to be called non-incorporated.

The contrast with Hawaii is revealing. The Philippines and Puerto Rico were densely populated lands inhabited by foreign peoples where the local elites held a large measure of the economic and social power. Hawaii was a sparsely populated land, where US economic interest held sway. The potential americanization of Hawaii stood out as a very real possibility - as was later confirmed. - The americanization of Puerto Rico, a Latin American nation in the middle of the Caribbean was a promising perspective and the Philippines were less so. The US was interested in the "cage not the birds" (to use a phrase coined by Pedro Albizu Campos as regards Puerto Rico). In the Puerto Rican case, contrary to Hawaii there were too many birds, almost, 1 million in a territory of 3,500 square miles. (In Hawaii in a territory twice the size of Puerto Rico Native Hawaiians only a small minority were native Hawaiians and by 1920 less than 10% of a total of 250,000)

II.As the century matured, the geopolitical reasons which had led to the invasion and acquisition of Puerto Rico became more and more evident. The Panama Canal was now a living reality and the threat posed to American interest in Latin American by Germany increased with the advent of the first World War.

The US tightened its hold on the Caribbean. It invaded Haitian 1915, the Dominican Republic in 1916 and formalized its will to remain permanently in Puerto Rico by imposing US citizenship through the Jones Act of 1917.

United States citizenship was the juridical expression of the will of the US to remain in control of Puerto Rico. Its purpose was to put to rest the issue of Independence. In the words of Rep. Jones:

"The US seems practically unanimous that Porto Rico is to remain permanently a part of the US in order to put an end to all agitation of this question...we ought to declare at once that the people of this island are citizen of the US. Is it not best in this way to remove the question from Porto Rican politics?"

And President Wilson in his has inaugural address, contrasting the Philippines and Puerto Rico said (quote) "no doubt we shall successfully enough bind Porto Rico" whereas

the Philippines, he said and I quote, is "a more difficult and debatable matter."

Thus the Philippines more distant, more alien - they were asiatic - and with a good enough strategic substitute in Hawaii, were thus promised eventual independence, while Puerto Ricans were made perment wards of US - colonialism through US citizenship. This geopolitical decision was juridically confirmed by the US Supreme Court in Balzac versus Puerto Rico (1922). The theory that Puerto Rico could be incorporated into the US through the imposition of US citizenship was rejected. Nobody was to be put on the road towards statehood sub-silentio on indirectly. Plainly and simply Puerto Rico was to be a possession of the US and besides it was to be permanently in such status by virtue of US citizenship. Puerto Rico was to be subject to US sovereignty but with no eventual promise either of statehood or independence.

Puerto Rico was now officially in the limbo of being a permanent colony of the first anti-colonial power of modern times.

III. A. The Struggle of the Puerto Rican people to control its own destiny multiplied in the 20's and 30's.

1. Without a doubt those advocating independence were in the majority.

2. 1936 - 46% Liberal Party + Nationalist Party.

3. 1940 - Electoral victory of the PPD (Bread, Land and Liberty).

B. World War II looming in the horizon. Will of the US - Geopolitical

1. Ponce Massacre

Imprisonment Albizu

2. PPD - Status on hold till after the war.

C. After the War - The Cold War

1. Puerto Rican Legislature - after the failure of Tydings Piñero Bill, it approved a Plebiscite Bill, between Statehood, Independence and Dominion Status: The US Governor vetoes and then President Truman.

So much for the will of the Puerto Rican people! Again the power and will of US control over Puerto Rico prevails.

D. As a consolation price the Elective Governor Act of 1947and in a quid pro quo the expulsion of the independentistas from the PPD - Repression

E. 1. But the Post War Decolonization Wave was to strong; and in Puerto Rico too powerful - Nationalist Uprising - PIP.

2. a) ELA - (and its English translation)

b) The ultimate fig leaf; coupled with forced UN Resolutions.

c) Two anthems, two flags and "in the natureof a compact" but all US laws apply. Sovereignty is vested on the US, and as federal increases local authority decreases.

d) We could argue all day but the US House of Representative has spoken clearly. The co-conspirator and the mastermind behind the 1952 Commonwealth fraud has turned state witness.

IV. But since 1952 ELA is pregnant with a profound contradiction-statehooders are the beneficiaries.

1. The gap is too great between the reality of colonialism and the theory of democracy and a republican form of government.

2. If to this contradiction one adds two overwhelming facts, then one fully understands the enormous growth of the statehood forces:

a) The enormous increase in economic dependence - 7 million in 1973 to $1.7 billion in 1995 (total of 24 billion) transfer payments to individuals (excluding social security, pensions, and veteran's benefits) (equivalent in government to government subsides).

b) The anti-independence propaganda campaign and political persecution (Puerto Rico Supreme Court decision).

The only way left open for many was statehood.

V. I venture to say that the future will be dictated by present day realities within the context of the two main determinants which I referred to at the beginning; the will of the US to control Puerto Rico and the existence of the Puerto Rican nation.

1. Non-incorporation is no longer an option because it is the seedbed of statehooders, and it is a repugnant anti-democratic colonial anachronism. Commonwealthers, rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic.

2. End of the Cold War.

Dwindling strategic needs in the present day world.

3. a) Alterative options - For a different nation, in full economic dependence the federalist option will naturally be explored within the context of "jíbaro statehood."

But it will be found wanting for, to the US, (E Pluribus Unum) the threat of multi-nationalism is too great.

b) Issue regarding Statehood cannot be postponed if rationality is to prevail.

c) Young Bill should be amended. How?

d) Face reality and move toward Puerto Rican sovereignty. In the present day, the two main determinants modern Puerto Rican history can finally find expression in Puerto Rico Sovereignty.

4. To conclude it may sound odd but I will quote from the Nobel Prize winning US Secretary of State, that is Elihu Root (always moved by reality) who said long ago.

"The organization of independent nations is in the main the outgrowth of the progress in civilization which leads people to seek the liberty of local self-government according to their own ideas. What ever may be the form of local govt's, there can be no tyranny so galling as the intimate control of the local government affairs of life by foreign rulers who are entirely indifferent to the local conceptions of how life ought to be conducted. National independence is an organized defense against that kind of tyranny. Probably the organization of nations is but a stage of development, but it is the nearest that mankind has yet come towards securing for itself a reasonable degree of liberty with a reasonable degree of order."


For a thematic discussion on politics, language and culture see: Situational Culture.
See Ruben Berrios Martinez @
independencia.net

[yautiawoman2]

[quote]Originally posted by yautiawoman2
[b]

Originally posted by Hombre-cuidad
I am not really sure how to help. I think you can try to take soem tutoring again, practice harder, get language tapes. If you want to translate something online, just copy the text you want to translate and paste it at http://www.freetranslation.com


Insistencias


Dear Sir: I have taken the time to send you this "misiva" since you do not recognize the importance of the " components" of culture and insist on a mechanistic world a la "Dios es Maquina."
It seems to me a bit much, your reductionist view of the world. Let me begin with a quote from an essay of one of our compatriotas on the issue of Cross Cultural Communication and your obvious position of "English Only."

Insistencias by Luz Nereida Perez:


Resulta sorprendente el que personas con una clara ideología independentista nos inclinemos tan automática y colonizadamente al uso de expresiones que conceptualmente contradicen nuestras propias ideas de desvinculación del poder opresor con el cual llevamos más de dos siglos luchando. Resulta asombroso, por ejemplo, el que inconscientemente insistamos -mediante un empleo irreflexivo y descuidado del idioma- en reconocer a Estados Unidos como un poder superior -y nosotros consecuentemente como inferiores- al engranarnos mediante nuestras impensadas expresiones a su repulsiva teoría del Destino Manifiesto.

Point #1: There are many intelligent, political, articulate, well meaning persons who think "English Only" should be the universal language of humanity. This, my dear sir, is viewed by many of your compatriotas, and mine, as part of the "repulsive theory of Manifest Destiny." This, sir, in my humble opinion, is linguistic "reduccionismo" and I will have to let MIT's Department of Linguistics straighten you out on this one, since they are the experts in the field of saving languages and cultures that are at the verge of extinction. (See Wayne O'Neill, Chairman Dept of Linguistics, MIT).

De igual modo -y como si todavía hiciera falta más- surge ese escape subliminal de reconocimiento de una grandeza superior en la nación imperialista y opresora al contraponernos como algo chiquito y, por ende, obviamente inferior. Razón tenía el caborrojeño Ramón Emeterio Betances cuando enunció que nos creemos que los grandes así lo son por el sencillo hecho de que desde nuestra perspectiva de arrodillados -o como diría nuestro jíbaro desde el punto de vista de los ñangotados- todos los demás definitivamente resultan ser de inmensa estatura.

Point#2 We cannot go into detail on this point so let me just try to be brief and cut to the chase:

On the Issue of Wold View, or Philosophy a la Gringolandia:

Recently there has been a great deal of "hullabaloo" about genetic reductionism and race theory. Now, to keep it simple, the conclusion, according to the latest research, is that we all came from one black woman in Africa (and I am not talking about Lucy). That makes everybody in this world "a ******" now I don't have any problems with that, (a mi me llaman la negra y soy la Negra de casa) since birth I have identified with the idea that I am a Caribbean person, and thus black. Now, if we had to pick a non-Puerto Rican to quote on the question of the psychological persona of the Caribbean Archipelago I would pick Fanon, given the fact that he is black and that you identify with the US racist paradigm (the World is Black and White, all things must be reduced to genetic, racist paradigms, for starters).

Now, I know you were not educated at the University of Puerto Rico, but I was. Way, back when, In those days we studied the black psyche in a white world, and hailed as our hero Franz Fanon, for his scientific analysis and poetic grace (born in Martinique in 1925 and studied medicine in France, specializing in psychiatry). We read the "Wretched of the Earth," we argued about "A Dying Colonialism" and got angry over the Chacales who assassinated our heroes in the African Revolutions, since Fanon considered those revolutions to be the 20th Century's most important struggles for liberation and since el Che was right in the thick of things at the UN. And if you really do not want to deal with Hostos and Betances and our traditional heroes then let me introduce you to Aime Cesaire, who said (Discours sur le Colonialisme) "I am talking of millions of men who have been skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement." I think it is good for you to know what many Puerto Ricans who live and struggle for independence have not said to you. And I want you to know that the reason they have not said it is not because they don't care what your reductionistic world is all about, after all we enjoy keeping up with every scientific myth the gringos cook up, it is because they are too busy with the real issue of consensus on our Archipelago today, Vieques, la isla nena. Vieques is a small island of mostly black men who are fishermen. Many black men from the other islands, who also fish often come to help our brothers in Vieques. So let me be quite frank, Fanon was right, I will paraphrase for your edification.

"I think it would be good if certain things were said. These things I am going to say, not shout. For it is a long time since shouting has gone out of my life. So very long...." (el hombre se sentia cansado, y yo tambien).

Why waste my time in the internet? No one has asked me for it, except for maybe one person. Some have communicated that they wish for me to respond to your reductionistic emotions, so it is especially those to whom it is directed.

"Well? Well, I reply quite calmly that there are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.

Toward a new humanism. ...

Understanding among men. ..."

Our colored brothers and sisters. ...

Humanity, I believe in you. ...

Race prejudice, the reduction to a black gene. ....

To understand and to love and to trust....

From all sides hundreds of Web Pages assail my senses, they try to impose their will on me. But a single line would be enough. Supply one lonely black gene to account for the human race and the color problem would be stripped of all its importance.

So the question remains: What does this man want? What does the black man want?

Again, let me quote Fanon: "At the risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers, I will say that the back is not a man." (si te cae la lluvia, busca una sombrilla y esto pal compa que puso un anuncio en el periodico para formar un ejercito en la defensa de la patria nuestra y solo le aparecieron dos mujeres).

"There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinary sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born. (parece que Fanon esta escribiendo despues del 9-11) In most cases, the black man lacks the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent into a real hell.

Man is not merely a possibility of recapture or of negation. If it is true that consciousness is a process of transcendence, we have to see too that this transcendence is haunted by the problems of love and understanding. Man is a yes that vibrates to cosmic harmonies. (por eso nos entretiene y nos facina tanto el tema de los planetas, las estrellas, el firmamento, las galaxias y el mito de la creacion del universo, sea desde el punto de vista "mitologico, pero mitos nuestros, como el del pajaro carpintero y las leyendas en la poesia de Corretjer" o "cientifico" ("big bang" vs. little whimper de la mitologia cientifica de los gringos). Uprooted, pursued, baffled, doomed to watch the dissolution of the truths that he has worked out for himself one after another, he has to give up projecting unto the world an antinomy that coexists with him.

The black is a black man; that is, as the result of a series of aberrations of affect (as in emotions), he is rooted at the core of a universe from which he must be extricated.

The problem is important. I propose nothing short of the liberation of the man of color from himself. We shall go very slowly, for there are two camps: the white and the black. (Pa los gringos solo existen Blancos o Negros, y perdonen por este aparte, es parte de mi humor "negro" o si no me lo creen preguntelen a Clinton, "nuestro" primer Presidente "Negro" de Harlem).

Stubbornly we shall investigate both metaphysics (Black and White) and we shall find that they are often quite fluid.

We shall have no mercy for the former governors, the former missionaries. To us, the man who adores the Negro is as "sick" as the man who abominates him.

Conversely, the black man who wants to turn his race white is as miserable as he who preaches hatred for the whites.

In the absolute, the black is no more to be loved than the Czech (o el "Afghanistan"), and truly what is to be done is to set man (sic)) free. (Pobres diablos).

Yo lo actualiso, porque llevamos mucho tiempo en esta discusion. Fanon puede decir lo que quiera pero que no lo diga Oscar Lewis (en Mexico o en Puerto Rico) las razones porque somos tan "Condenados de la Tierra" o tan colonizados. esa pregunta se la dejo a Eduardo Seda Bonilla, pa que la conteste; o a Zenon, no al pescador de Vieques, (ese no tiene tiempo pa este relajo, aunque tiene la capacidad intelectual, y es uno de mis contemporaneos y un verdadero compatriota), pero al Profesor de la UPR y autor de" Narciso Descubre Su Tracero", que fue profesor mio.

"...But these truths were a fire in me then. Now I can tell them without being burned. These truths do not have to be hurled in men's faces. They are not intended to ignite fervor. I do not trust fervor.

Every time it has burst out somewhere, it has brought fire, famine, misery....And contempt for man.

Fervor is a weapon of choice of the impotent.

Of those who heat the iron in order to shape it at once. I should prefer to warm man's body and leave him. We might reach this result: mankind retaining this fire through self-combustion.

Mankind (sic) set free of the trampoline that is the resistance of others, and digging into its own flesh to find a meaning. "

Only a few of you reading this will understand the problems that were encountered in its composition. After all I am a product of my past, all of it, genetic, culture, psyche, sex, race, religion, language and national origin, disability and alas old age. I do not want to form categories, but if I must in order to satisfy those who cannot connect without the gringo obsession of pigeon holes, so be it!

Dice Fanon, y yo cito:

"In an age when skeptical doubt has taken root in the world, when in the words of a gang of salauds it is no longer possible to find a sense of non-sense, it becomes harder to penetrate to a level where the categories of sense and non-sense are not yet invoked." (Thus my remark, esto del reductionism genetic es pura basura, chico).

The black man wants to be white. The white man slaves to reach a human level.

In the course of this essay we shall observe the development of an effort to understand the black-white relation. (Remember we are talking about the gringo paradigm where everything is black or white).

The white man is sealed in his whiteness.

The black man in his blackness.

We shall seek to ascertain the directions of this dual narcissism and the motivation that inspire it.

...Concern with the elimination of a vicious circle has been the only guide-line for my efforts.

There is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to black men.

There is another fact: Black men want to prove to white men, at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect.

..................................

"Man's tragedy, Nietzche said, is that he was once a child. None the less, we cannot afford to forget that, as Charles Odier has shown us, the neurotic's fate remains in his own hands." (No es culpa mia que naci y me crie en un barrio entre los montes de Naranjito, Corozal, Comerio y Barranquitas. No es mi culpa que prefiera los cuentos de mis tias y mis tios de esos barrios, y que identifique con la poesia de Corretjer cuando sube tristemente por el Barrio la Cuchilla. o con el Cuento de Abelardo D.A. de Santa Clo en una escuelita de la Cuchilla y que prefiera estos a los cuentos de Mark Twain de Huckleberry Finn o Tom Sawyer, o a la poesia de Shakespeare o Elizabeth Barret Browning, aunque tuve que aprendermelos de memoria, los lei pero la verdad nunca le encontre el chiste. Como que no tienen el mismo sabor de los cuentistas y los poetas nuestros. (Que culpa tiene la estaca....).

Every paradigm in the public schools of the US begins with a psychological truth or reality of the gringo culture, it is individualistic and very Skinnerian. Individualism in the service of the mighty dollar. Or consumer driven, narcissistic, alienated, individuals dedicated to a pure, unadulterated basic genetic drive: greed. (The Great experiment, Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics, at the time of Allende I only understood that I loved the songs of Victor Jara, "Te Recuerdo Amanda...la calle mojada...or the voice of Violeta Parra "Gracias a la Vida"... que me ha dado tanto, or the poems of a Chilean who first I encountered in a protest song by a Puerto Rican "Si Nueva York relumbra como el oro y hay edificios con quinientos barres, aqui dejare escrito que se hicieron con el sudor de todos los arrabales) Pablo Neruda. .

So I agree with Fanon, the gringo analysis must be psychological, and it is based on a sense of "individual freedom" that culture requires it.

We are told we are fighting for individual freedom, for democracy for the "Bill of Rights" of the US constitution, which our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters have taken serious, after all, we probably lost more people on 9-11, per capita, than any other ethnic group. Now soldiers, (Navy, Air force, Marines or National Guard) are protecting the "rest of us" from international terror by assassinating thousands of people in Afghanistan.. So when Fanon says:

In spite of this it is apparent to me that the effective dis-alienation of the black man entails an immediate recognition of social and economic realities. If there is an inferiority complex, it is the outcome of a double process:

--primarily, economic;

--subsequently, the internalization-or, better, the epidermalization-of this inferiority."

At the bottom of the gringo paradigm of Freud and Skinner is the child in me, the adult in me and the father in me theory, the great trinity in me.

"Reacting against the constitutionalist tendency of the late ninteenth century, Freud inisited that the individual factor be taken into account through psych9oanlaysis. He substituted for a phylogenetic theory the ontogenetic perspective. It will be ssen that thje black man's alienation is not an individual question. Beside phylogeny and onto9geny stands sociogeny. In one sense, confroming to the view of Leconte and Damey, let us say that this is a question of a sociodiagnostic (un diagnostico social)..

But society, unlike biochemical processes, cannot escape human influences. Man is what brings society into being. The prognosis is in the hands of those who are willing to get rid of the worm-eaten roots of the structure (O como hemos dicho, la realidad se construye socialmente).

The black man must wage his war on both levels:Since historically they influence each other, any unilateral liberation is incomplete, and the gravest mistake would be to believe in their automatic interdependence. Besides, such a systematic tendency is contrary to the facts. This will be proved.

Reality, for once, requires a total understanding. On the objective level as on the subjective level, a solution has to be supplied."

Did we begin with a language argument?: Let us return to the essay posted by nuestra colega on Insistencia:




Y de rodillas nos ponemos en nuestro impensado empleo de las voces "metrópolis", "norteamericano" o "americano" y en el uso del concepto "isla". Reflexionemos, pues... ¿Qué hace un independentista llamando metrópolis a Estados Unidos, sino es reconociendo a ese país como nuestra ciudad central? ¿No es eso acaso absolutamente contrario a la base conceptual de nuestra ideología? ¿No es precisamente lo que combatimos mediante esta lucha a la que hemos consagrado nuestras vidas? Consideremos las codificaciones léxicas y las etimologías de los vocablos que día a día empleamos. Reflexionemos sobre sus valores y su poder ante los otros. ¿Qué es lo que realmente estamos comunicando?

La voz metrópoli o metrópolis -puede escribirse indistintamente de una u otra manera- procede del griego méter (madre) y polis(ciudad). Es decir, que la metrópolis es la ciudad madre, la ciudad central, la ciudad superior ante la cual otras son inferiores e inclinan sus cabezas. El Diccionario Clave de Uso del Español Actual nos ofrece tres definiciones para este sustantivo hispánico, la primera de las cuales es: "ciudad principal o muy importante por su extensión o por su inmensa población". De donde indiscutiblemente se deriva que San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico es la metrópolis de nuestro país. La segunda definición -que es la que es anatema en su uso para los que proclamamos el ideal de la independencia es: "país al que pertenece una colonia". Seguidamente el mencionado Diccionario la emplea en la siguiente oración: Las colonias querían independizarse de la metrópoli. ¡Y ahí es que está la clave! A quienes proclamamos el ideal de la independencia no nos debe dar la gana de reconocer a Estados Unidos -ni a la mismísima España cuando aludimos a ella en escritos históricos- como metropólis porque la palabra otorga, la palabra decreta, la palabra es el arma más poderosa del mundo y al aludir al poder opresor como metrópoli bajamos las cabezas y le reconocemos una supremacía. [A la autora de esta columna no le da la real gana de reconocer ideológica o lingüísticamente a Estados Unidos como metrópoli. Nos parece absolutamente inconcebible aludir a ese país como tal en nuestra expresión hablada o escrita. ¡Estados Unidos definitiva y contundemente NO es mi metrópolis!] La tercera definición del mentado vocablo es de orden eclesiástico cuando se emplea para aludir a la "iglesia arzobispal de la que dependen algunas diócesis". Allá ellos con su uso, pero en lo que a otros respecta el vocablo metrópolis es definitivamente anatema (voz que en la Iglesia Católica es sinónimo de excomunión). Así que a excomulgar, apartar o excluir de nuestra comunicación -que no es otra cosa que común unión o comunión- al vocablo metrópolis. ¡Excomulgado ha de quedar!


Por otro lado, propóngamonos igualmente a erradicar de nuestra expresión diaria el uso de los gentilicios "americano" o "norteamericano" para aludir a quienes nuestra lengua otorga un gentilicio claro, definido y con sus lindes: estadounidense. Si su lengua inglesa no se ocupó de otorgarles un gentilicio claro y distintivo -porque nadie es "United Statean"-, pues allá ellos. Si ellos optaron por apropiarse engreída y prepotentemente de América, denominándose "American" o "Northamericans", pues allá ellos. Pero en lo que a nosotros respecta, no les entreguemos a Norteamérica -que incluye a México- y mucho menos a la América nuestra. ¡Que se recojan a buen vivir dentro de los lindes de su territorio! ¡Son estadounidenses -con fronteras claras y limitadas- y punto!


Finalmente abandonemos la costumbre de aludir a nuestro país como "isla". ¡Demontre, no somos una isla, sino un archipiélago! ¿Acaso vamos a pie a Vieques y a Culebra? ¿Acaso se puede llegar al Viejo San Juan sin cruzar puentes? ¿Cuándo vamos a dejar de repetir lo que dijo el gringo aberrado Miller en su abominable historia de Puerto Rico en cuanto a que somos una "isla chiquita y de escasos recursos". Sustituyamos la expresión isla por país o sencillamente por el bello nombre del nuestro: Puerto Rico.
Now the trick is to continue in the construction of a dialogue for a new paradigm when there is so much diversity of world views in Puerto Rico.com



Lets then begin with application of your world view to the theme of education. Since you have been molded in a Gringo Mentality let us place this "box" in a compartmentalized cultural rubric we shall label: Situational Culture

Let's say you have taken over the education system in Puerto Rico and you are about to implement your Gringo Paradigm. You must begin by the destruction of the present educational system there, no big deal, there are many compatriotas that are quite unhappy with el "Departamento de Destruction Publica"

First step: Question

What are the important theoretical and programmatic dimensions of bilingual programs (transitional bilingual, since you will be phasing out Puerto Rican Spanish, History and Culture and substituting a completely Gringo Paradigm but under complete autonomy and under the control of the Puerto Rican Party).

What are the theoretical dimensions of the communities (Neoricans in Puerto Rico and in the US) in which the programs of bilingual education of excellence exist?

For the purpose of simplicity and brevity here let me put the question as follows:

First: What are the key independent variables (casual factors) which influence bilingual education programs in the US?

Second: What are the key dependent variables (outcomes) of bilingual education and in re. to the Puerto Rican population in the US?

Third: What are some of the major intervening variables (factors) or the factors modifying (as in Skinner) such outcomes?

Of course, there is no one correct or Single Factor (see Marcus) to these questions, but we shall deal with some important theoretical dimensions, after all the strand is called philosophy.

First: The independent variables, and the interpretation of outcomes depends on the world view of the researcher and the particular theory he or she employs to explain and predict the phenomena.

(Assume a Null Hypothesis)

We will attempt to develop three strands, you can pick and chose your preferred educational paradigm by choosing one of the particular theories of social and educational change and to delineate the identification and interpretation of variables of bilingual education within the framework of each particular theory.

We can probably agree on some basic phenomena which form the background to OBEMLA ( An office within the Department of Education of the US of which I was a fellow; Doctoral Fellow, OBEMLA, 1978), (Ed.D.F. University of San Francisco 1980). My basic concern was adult literacy and and the first chapter of my thesis. This research was based on Policy Studies at San Diego State University, on how the US manipulates International Education models for the purpose of "Nation Building" (as in Pinochet's Chile, por eso de el modelo neoliberal de Milton Freidman y la Chicago School of Economics); which gave rise lead me to include the original purpose of the Congressional debates re. the legislation of Title VII of (Elementary and Secondary Education Act at the time HEW or Department of Health, Education and Welfare). Title VII was to target mostly Mexican and Mexican American Children from a low socioeconomic stuatus (SES) measured by Federal Free Lunch or Reduced Lunch in the US Public Schools. and who spoke no or poor (PE) English and who encountered massive school dropout. The "Hispanic" children suffered from suspensions and expulsions and even if they remained in school they experienced failure, with the result of consequent early antisocial activities in and out of school to this day (gangs or "palomillas" of the US barrios). At the end of the line the outcome was low integration into the economic life of the nation. They become part of the informal economy, (see New School of Social Research, Havermas).

Now let us say we are helping you cope with this very serious problem when you have control of the Puerto Rican Education System (El Departamento de Destruccion Publica a la Partido PR)

The controversy will begin when we consider why this is so, any redblooded Gringo will tell you it is because you are Puerto Rican and because of your genetics, you are inferior! Punto, end of story!

(See Jensen, et. al)

But hold your horses, you are talking to the essence of that identity, a Jibara del campo (de por alla cerca del Abanico), who probably would be a "border line" (LD) person under such a definition. Now LD or Learning Disabled persons are really a social construction of reality, in my humble Jibara point of view.

Take for example, your President George WWW Bush. now you know and I know them there mistakes the Prez makes are a result of the fact the poor devil is dyslexic (not the same as Freud's Psychopathology of everyday life) besides he is from Texas! Thus your Prez is a Learning Disabled person and we have no problems with that, after all he is not the first US President who is LD, other living "repucke" US Presidents also qualify under Special Education Definitions as defined under ADA and/or IDEA (Individuals with disabilities in Education Act). i.e. Ford and Reagan.

What outcomes should follow the proposed Puerto Rican model will differ when I chose a different philosophical strand to explain reality, not based on genetics, but on the social construction of reality.

Such scholarly disagreement at given times becomes public, as in this public forum.

(See the American Anthropological Association's censure of the work of Arthur Jensen).

Now back when I was a student at the University of Puerto Rico (y desde entonces ha llovido mucho), other fields of study looked at scholarly strife within their disciplines from the notion of Kuhn's paradigm shift (1970, pobre Prof. Buitrago, como sufrio conmigo). Entonces yo ni sabia como se comia eso de paradigm shifts. Much less the dimensions or implications for bilingual education. Later in my life I published a small volume for the Institute of Cultural Pluralism in an attempt to design a conceptual framework for the purpose of posing Problems and Issues in Bilingual Education Programming.

But let us return to Kuhn, by paradigms, Kuhn means "the way a scientific or a professional community views a field of study, adentifies the appropriate problems for study, and specifies legitimate concepts and methods." Kuhn:

Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards...and continuation of a particular research tradition...paradigm is a criterion for choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for granted, can be assumed to have solutions. To a great extent, these are the only problems that the community will admit as scientific or encourage its members to undertake. A paradigm can even isolate the community from those socially important problems that are not reducible to puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies (See RG Paulston, 1976).

In other words, and for your edification, we are introducing you to the controversy that many Puerto Ricans encounter with the "English Only vs. Bilingual Education or English Plus" mobs in the US.

In brief, R.G. Paulston, (drawing on the literature for my first chapter, a literature of social and educational change for educating the masses, proposes two models). They are based on two major US Educational paradigms: the functional or "equilibirum" paradigm (the US Educational Models are just fine, don't fix it if it ain't broke for those that want to maintain the status quo), or the "conflict paradigm" (and admittedly these two cross and overlap in the US). You will be happy to know that the theories that fall within the "equlibrium" paradigm are evolutionary (a la Darwin), structural-functionalist, and systems oriented with a very statistical analysis (for the purpose of selecting stratified random samples within the broad spectrum of the planned variation longitudinal studies available in the field of bilingual education research). But basically these theories are focused on maintaining society in equilibrium through the "harmonious relationship" of the social components, and emphasis on smooth cumulative change towards a more perfect Gringo model of education for the purpose of a more perfect consumer society, in other words you transfor through slow reform (very slow, see Brown vs. The Board, when the court ordered integration was supposed to be "with deliberate speed" it was so deliberate we are back to Plessy's separate but unequal).

Theoretical approaches which fall within the conflict paradigm are group conflict theory, cultural revitalization theory, and an anarchistic-utopian approach, for example: saving Native American Indian Languages and Cultures, ie, Hopi, Navajo, Apache, Lakota, or even better (in the Anglo sense of the world) the "Civilized Nations of the Native American State, Oklahoma, i.e. Cherokee Nation type of Bilingual Educational Model (now we are in the domain of the Department of the Interior and the BIA).

"Theories which cluster more or less within the conflict paradigm emphasize the inherent instability of social systems and the conflicts over values, resources, and power that follow as a natural consequence" R. G. Paulston, 1976 (PR a good example).

Thus each theory will identify differently the key variables and their relationships, and each researcher will seek to answer

[yautiawoman2]

Originally posted by yautiawoman2
Reality, (Wow!) What a Concept
By Rubén Berríos Martínez


Without attributing responsibility for my ideas to anyone but myself, I must confess, at the start, that my education at Yale Law School under the guidance of Prof. Myrs McDougal, left me with an unbending propensity to look beyond the letter of the law and probe into its economic, political, and even psychological context. In analyzing a juridical problem - like the Puerto Rican case before us nothing better exemplifies my attitude that an anecdote recalled by a very good friend who studied law, not far from here, in Boston, is a Law School, not famous - at least during my student years - for anything resembling what we at Yale called, in Prof. McDougals term, a "policy oriented approach" (Reality -Wow- What a Concept!).

It is from the perspective of reality and the juridical concepts flowing from that reality - that I will analyze US - Puerto Rico relations.

One can describe this whole past century - since Puerto Rico became a possession of the US by virtue of the Spanish American War - as a prolonged and vain attempt by the American juridical system to justify and legitimize a new political reality (US control of a foreign or alien people) that is diametrically apposed to the very nature of the US constitutional system. In short a constitutional order, born of the first modern anti-colonial struggle was forced to juridically justify colonialism, a notion not only contrary but repugnant to its very nature.

There are two basic undeniable facts that have determined Puerto Rico's relation with the US since 1898. First; US geopolitical and military considerations have been the basic determinants of US policy towards Puerto Rico since the late 19th century. Second; Puerto Rico is a distinct and homogeneous spanish speaking Latin American nation.

In the tension arising from the US will to control Puerto Rico and the struggle of the Puerto Rican people to control their own destiny, can be written the reality of 20th Century US Puerto Rico relations. The legal doctrines referring to such relations supplement that reality.

I.The geo-political and military considerations which led to the US involvement is the Cuban-Spanish War are well known. As regards Puerto Rico its control by the US was basic to the extension of US influence over LA in general and the Caribbean in particular. The acquisition of Puerto Rico was further tied to the decision to build the Panama Canal.

The first legal doctrine developed to justify or legitimize US control of the alien territories and peoples acquired by virtue of the War of 1898 was the doctrine of non-incorporation. The Philippines and Puerto Rico presented new realities which the US had never faced. This doctrine as you well know, had its genesis in various law review articles and was crystallized at the beginning of this century in several Supreme Court decision. For purpose of my exposition, suffice it to say that it is a doctrine designed to justify the presence and control of the US in the Philippines and Puerto Rico territories which are not destined towards statehood. In the new legal vocabulary developed by the Supreme Court those territories belong to but are not part of the US.

For the first time, the US acquired "possessions" as distinct from territories on the way to ultimate statehood, and had been this case since the Louisiana Purchase. It is thus not strange that different words were found to distinguish between old fashioned territories which were part of the "corpus" of the US political body (that is the incorporated territories) and the new type of territories or possessions (not part of the US "corpus") which were to be called non-incorporated.

The contrast with Hawaii is revealing. The Philippines and Puerto Rico were densely populated lands inhabited by foreign peoples where the local elites held a large measure of the economic and social power. Hawaii was a sparsely populated land, where US economic interest held sway. The potential americanization of Hawaii stood out as a very real possibility - as was later confirmed. - The americanization of Puerto Rico, a Latin American nation in the middle of the Caribbean was a promising perspective and the Philippines were less so. The US was interested in the "cage not the birds" (to use a phrase coined by Pedro Albizu Campos as regards Puerto Rico). In the Puerto Rican case, contrary to Hawaii there were too many birds, almost, 1 million in a territory of 3,500 square miles. (In Hawaii in a territory twice the size of Puerto Rico Native Hawaiians only a small minority were native Hawaiians and by 1920 less than 10% of a total of 250,000)

II.As the century matured, the geopolitical reasons which had led to the invasion and acquisition of Puerto Rico became more and more evident. The Panama Canal was now a living reality and the threat posed to American interest in Latin American by Germany increased with the advent of the first World War.

The US tightened its hold on the Caribbean. It invaded Haitian 1915, the Dominican Republic in 1916 and formalized its will to remain permanently in Puerto Rico by imposing US citizenship through the Jones Act of 1917.

United States citizenship was the juridical expression of the will of the US to remain in control of Puerto Rico. Its purpose was to put to rest the issue of Independence. In the words of Rep. Jones:

"The US seems practically unanimous that Porto Rico is to remain permanently a part of the US in order to put an end to all agitation of this question...we ought to declare at once that the people of this island are citizen of the US. Is it not best in this way to remove the question from Porto Rican politics?"

And President Wilson in his has inaugural address, contrasting the Philippines and Puerto Rico said (quote) "no doubt we shall successfully enough bind Porto Rico" whereas

the Philippines, he said and I quote, is "a more difficult and debatable matter."

Thus the Philippines more distant, more alien - they were asiatic - and with a good enough strategic substitute in Hawaii, were thus promised eventual independence, while Puerto Ricans were made perment wards of US - colonialism through US citizenship. This geopolitical decision was juridically confirmed by the US Supreme Court in Balzac versus Puerto Rico (1922). The theory that Puerto Rico could be incorporated into the US through the imposition of US citizenship was rejected. Nobody was to be put on the road towards statehood sub-silentio on indirectly. Plainly and simply Puerto Rico was to be a possession of the US and besides it was to be permanently in such status by virtue of US citizenship. Puerto Rico was to be subject to US sovereignty but with no eventual promise either of statehood or independence.

Puerto Rico was now officially in the limbo of being a permanent colony of the first anti-colonial power of modern times.

III. A. The Struggle of the Puerto Rican people to control its own destiny multiplied in the 20's and 30's.

1. Without a doubt those advocating independence were in the majority.

2. 1936 - 46% Liberal Party + Nationalist Party.

3. 1940 - Electoral victory of the PPD (Bread, Land and Liberty).

B. World War II looming in the horizon. Will of the US - Geopolitical

1. Ponce Massacre

Imprisonment Albizu

2. PPD - Status on hold till after the war.

C. After the War - The Cold War

1. Puerto Rican Legislature - after the failure of Tydings Piñero Bill, it approved a Plebiscite Bill, between Statehood, Independence and Dominion Status: The US Governor vetoes and then President Truman.

So much for the will of the Puerto Rican people! Again the power and will of US control over Puerto Rico prevails.

D. As a consolation price the Elective Governor Act of 1947and in a quid pro quo the expulsion of the independentistas from the PPD - Repression

E. 1. But the Post War Decolonization Wave was to strong; and in Puerto Rico too powerful - Nationalist Uprising - PIP.

2. a) ELA - (and its English translation)

b) The ultimate fig leaf; coupled with forced UN Resolutions.

c) Two anthems, two flags and "in the natureof a compact" but all US laws apply. Sovereignty is vested on the US, and as federal increases local authority decreases.

d) We could argue all day but the US House of Representative has spoken clearly. The co-conspirator and the mastermind behind the 1952 Commonwealth fraud has turned state witness.

IV. But since 1952 ELA is pregnant with a profound contradiction-statehooders are the beneficiaries.

1. The gap is too great between the reality of colonialism and the theory of democracy and a republican form of government.

2. If to this contradiction one adds two overwhelming facts, then one fully understands the enormous growth of the statehood forces:

a) The enormous increase in economic dependence - 7 million in 1973 to $1.7 billion in 1995 (total of 24 billion) transfer payments to individuals (excluding social security, pensions, and veteran's benefits) (equivalent in government to government subsides).

b) The anti-independence propaganda campaign and political persecution (Puerto Rico Supreme Court decision).

The only way left open for many was statehood.

V. I venture to say that the future will be dictated by present day realities within the context of the two main determinants which I referred to at the beginning; the will of the US to control Puerto Rico and the existence of the Puerto Rican nation.

1. Non-incorporation is no longer an option because it is the seedbed of statehooders, and it is a repugnant anti-democratic colonial anachronism. Commonwealthers, rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic.

2. End of the Cold War.

Dwindling strategic needs in the present day world.

3. a) Alterative options - For a different nation, in full economic dependence the federalist option will naturally be explored within the context of "jíbaro statehood."

But it will be found wanting for, to the US, (E Pluribus Unum) the threat of multi-nationalism is too great.

b) Issue regarding Statehood cannot be postponed if rationality is to prevail.

c) Young Bill should be amended. How?

d) Face reality and move toward Puerto Rican sovereignty. In the present day, the two main determinants modern Puerto Rican history can finally find expression in Puerto Rico Sovereignty.

4. To conclude it may sound odd but I will quote from the Nobel Prize winning US Secretary of State, that is Elihu Root (always moved by reality) who said long ago.

"The organization of independent nations is in the main the outgrowth of the progress in civilization which leads people to seek the liberty of local self-government according to their own ideas. What ever may be the form of local govt's, there can be no tyranny so galling as the intimate control of the local government affairs of life by foreign rulers who are entirely indifferent to the local conceptions of how life ought to be conducted. National independence is an organized defense against that kind of tyranny. Probably the organization of nations is but a stage of development, but it is the nearest that mankind has yet come towards securing for itself a reasonable degree of liberty with a reasonable degree of order."


For a thematic discussion on politics, language and culture see: Situational Culture.
See Ruben Berrios Martinez @
independencia.net

But for the purpose of Socio-linguistics, say the language domains; lets just say we have been exposed by a lecture on Puerto Rican History, Culture, Language, Politics and Law at UPR, Rio Piedras by Prof. Ruben Berrios Martinez

Now the domain is an academic setting (See categories of domains in Halliday, Michael A.K. (1973) in Explorations in the Functions of Language, London: Arnold.
or Learning How to Mean: Explorations in the Development of Language. London: Arnold.

According to Frank Smith, it is in fact the purposes of language, the uses to which it is put, which are the key to language learning. As the linguist M.A.K. Halliday has pointed out (ibid), children learn language and its uses simultaneously. They do not learn language, either spoken or written, which they then use for various purposes. The learning comes with the use of languge and with the understanding of its uses.

Creemos que este proceso es igual en los adultos cuando aprenden un nuevo idioma.

Children do not learn about language as an abstraction, as an end in itself, but in the process of achieving other ends, like getting another drink of juice, learning to distinguish cats from dogs, striving to enjoy a story from a book. The basic insight that must enable a child to make sense of speech is that its sounds are not random, they are not arbitrarily substitutable. By this I mean that the sounds of speech make a difference, they are there for a purpose. An adult cannot produce the sounds "Mira por ahi viene una troca" when the intended meaning is "let's go for a walk."

Three Aspects of Learning

Learning is the modification or elaboration of what is already known, of cognitive structure, our theory of the world. What exactly is modified or elaborated? It can be any of the three components of the theory: the category system, the rules for relating objects or events to categories (sets of distinctive features), or the complex network of interrelations among categories.